Small, mobile computing devices, including hand-held and palm-size computers and the like, are becoming important and popular user tools. In general, they are becoming small enough to be extremely convenient while consuming less and less battery power, and at the same time becoming capable of running more powerful applications.
Although such devices continue to shrink in size, size limitations are being reached as a result of human limitations. For example, a full character keyboard that enables user data input cannot be so small that human fingers cannot depress the individual keys thereon. As a result, such devices (e.g., palm-size computers) may eliminate the full size physical keyboard and provide a representation of a keyboard on a touch-sensitive display. To this end, the user enters characters by touching the screen with a stylus at locations corresponding to the displayed keys.
Alternatively, devices have been developed that allow the user to enter data written by hand directly on the screen. These devices receive pen movements as digital ink, and display the ink on the screen as it is input. The application may store the digitized ink as is, or the application may interpret some of the ink, e.g., it may attempt some form of character recognition, and then store the interpretation as ASCII text or the like.
Unlike conventional word processors that manually scroll upon receiving an enter key, or automatically scroll when the user has typed a character that will not fit on the currently displayed screen, when entering handwritten characters, there is no way to precisely know whether the user has finished writing on the last-displayed line or intends to add more to that line. For example, if the user is writing in the middle of the last line, it is not clear whether the user has ended one paragraph and wants to start a new paragraph, or whether the user is preparing to write additional characters on the same line. Similarly, it is not known when the user wants to keep writing in the same paragraph, but needs a new line to fit in the next word.
To avoid this problem, prior art inking mechanisms require the user to manually scroll the ink. However, manual scrolling is inconvenient and annoying to many users, slows down the input of information and tends to interrupt the user's thought processes as the user hunts for the scroll button.